A twice-weekly syndicated newspaper column on California public affairs.

Monday, June 12, 2017

VIOLENT CRIMES: WHAT PRICE LEGAL DEFINITIONS?

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, JUNE 27, 2017, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“VIOLENT CRIMES: WHAT PRICE LEGAL
DEFINITIONS?”

Words matter, we often hear in these
days of a President notorious for loose verbiage.

They also matter in the California
Penal Code, where the label “violent” is not applied to many crimes most people
with common sense would unquestionably define as violent. Some examples:
assault with a deadly weapon, soliciting murder, elder and child abuse, arson,
human trafficking, plus some forms of rape and forced sodomy.

That word “violent,” or in this case
“non-violent” matters more than ever since the last year’s passage of
Proposition 57, a pet project of Gov. Jerry Brown.

Under this law, convicts with crimes not legally defined as
violent can win early paroles in exchange for certain achievements (like
earning college degrees) and good behavior. Brown spent tens of millions of his
own campaign dollars to pass this measure by a strong 64-36 percent margin.

Part of the campaign for passage was a
pledge by state legislators to push through changes in the definitions of many
crimes.

Some of those lawmakers did follow
through and attempt this during the spring. But the last in a series of bills
aiming to expand the list of crimes labeled violent died in the Assembly
Appropriations Committee in late May. That one, a bipartisan measure sponsored
by Democratic committee chair Lorena Gonzalez of San Diego and Republican Melissa
Melendez of Lake Elsinore, aimed to classify all rapes and human trafficking as
violent crimes.

But its price tag proved too heavy for
the Democratic majority of the committee, even if it looks puny next to many
other appropriations: Keeping in custody the approximately 120 current
prisoners who could have been affected by this bill would have cost $1 million
a year, not much in a budget where billions often seem to be tossed around
willy-nilly.

No one knows how defeat of efforts to
expand the legal list of violent offenses will affect actual crime in the
streets.

Brown contended during the campaign
that “non-violent prisoners…can change their thinking,” but offered no clue how
state parole panels might be able to tell when that has genuinely happened.

What is known is that when prison
realignment became official state policy in 2011, there was an immediate 41
percent drop in new prison admissions over the first eight months, with more
than 24,000 inmates moved from overcrowded state prisons to county jails during
the first 15 months.

The claim from Brown’s administration
and other advocates of eased parole is that violent crimes like murder and rape
have not risen under this program, and therefore are not likely to jump under
Proposition 57.

One report presented to Orange County
supervisors last year claimed that one-fourth of the first 8,000 felons
released into the county under realignment had been convicted of another crime
in the year after their discharge. That rate just about matched prior
recidivism, which some took to mean that realignment and the 2014 Proposition’s
47’s reclassification of many crimes from felonies to misdemeanors did not
increase crime.

But at the same time, property crimes
in big cities rose sharply. In San Francisco, car burglaries, theft and other
property crimes rose by 667 cases per 100,000 population from the previous
year. There were similar increases in Long Beach and Los Angeles.

That was one reason expanding the
Penal Code’s list of violent crimes was so important to many in law
enforcement.

Because so many plainly violent crimes
are not legally classified that way, the state’s Association of Deputy District
Attorneys has called Proposition 57 “a full-fledged assault on public safety,”
claiming it will allow parole boards to ignore sentencing enhancements for
prior offenses like some forms of rape and soliciting killings.

It’s too early to know whether that
prediction is coming true, but there’s little doubt changes in the list of
formally violent crimes are vitally needed. The fact that lawmakers so far
refuse to make those changes marks just one more set of short-sighted choices
by a Legislature where such decisions happen frequently.

-30-
Email Thomas Elias at
tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising
Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now
available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, go to www.californiafocus.net

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About Me

Thomas Elias writes the syndicated California Focus column, appearing twice weekly in 88 newspapers around California, with circulation over 2.2 million.
He has won numerous awards from organizations like the National Headliners Club, the California Newspaper Publishers Association, the Los Angeles Press Club, and the California Taxpayers Association. He has been nominated three times for the Pulitzer Prize in distinguished commentary.
Elias is the author of two books, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government's Campaign to Squelch It" (now in its third edition; also published in Japanese and recently optioned for a television movie) and "The Simpson Trial in Black and White," co-authored with the late Dennis Schatzman.